Control: The story of a keyboard lamer who repented.

     I used to be a keyboard lamer. I went through the Doom days & the early Quake days limping along on the sluggish keyboard. I turned slowly. I used keys to look up & down, which meant taking my fingers off of the forward/backward/left/right
keys, leaving me paralyzed for precious seconds. I hated having to look up to shoot at Quake's scrags or Eradicator's turrets or enemies in Dark Forces. I stumbled through Descent's clumsy keyboard layout, my fingers often tripping over themselves in
the heat of combat.
      I have tried out the standard control layout on several games, & it has revolutionized my gameplay. The standard control layout to which I refer is:
     a = strafe left
     d = strafe right
     w = forward
     s = backward
     Mouselook always on, which means that looking up/down & turning left/right are controlled with the mouse. Having the mouse speed or sensitivity as high as possible is a big plus as well. I have the left button set to fire & the right button set to jump. I have seen variations in which the right button is used to switch weapons in Quake, which I really should do too, because I still fumble around to select weapons by hitting the number keys, which often proves to be costly.
    I first heard of this layout in an interview with KillCreek, & later I read that Thresh used the same layout. I also saw photographs of Romero & Carmack using the same layout. I was
playing Eradicator at the time, & so I gave the new layout a try. The improvement was immediate! Looking up & down was no longer a dreaded hindrance. The mouse made it as intuitive & natural as turning your head. My accuracy & speed became deadly as I was able to turn with a quick snap instead of a slow turn.
     I tried it on Quake, & instantly became the caliber of player which regularly kicked my butt in Quakeworld back in my keyboard days. One enhancement that I was slow to pick up
on for a while was turning up the mouse speed or sensitivity. With it turned up high, 180-degree turns became effortless.
     I have since tried this layout in other games, & found the same amazing improvement in my skill. In Descent it has become very easy, almost laughable, to dodge enemy fire & circle
strafe around them. My only complaint about Descent is the mouse speed is still too slow, even at maximum setting. Turning more than 45 degrees requires some serious lifting & dragging, which makes me wish for the keyboard turning instead. Quick 180's are out of the question! But otherwise my control in Descent has become much more intuitive. I use left shift & caps lock for strafing up & down, which is somewhat clumsy but still do-able.